Category Archives: Sex Positive

I found this article via Jezebel, and I am intrigued! Apparently, the lovely and amazing Betty Dodson, founder of the sex-positive feminism movement, teaches masturbation classes for women in New York City.

Does anyone else remember the scene in Fried Green Tomatoes where Evelyn Couch and her friend Missy attend a class intended to “get the spark back in marriage”, and Evelyn practically runs out of the room when they are instructed to use mirrors to look at their own vaginas? I laughed at that when I was younger, but now I find it so sad.

Get out those mirrors, girls, and take a look. Get acquainted. I declare your vagina to be beautiful.

With so much cultural mystery surrounding the “elusive” female orgasm, I think classes like this are a fantastic idea. I mean, honestly, researchers just rediscovered how complex of an organ the clitoris is, and how, like a TARDIS, it is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. (Thanks to Doctor Xtreme for that line, and the awesome portmanteau, CliTARDIS.)

Can you imagine a world where young women were encouraged to learn to appreciate their genitals and taught how to achieve orgasm? How about classes where partners were encouraged to explore your genitals and taught how to help you achieve satisfying orgasms? I want to live in that world.

Would you attend this kind of class? I will definitely be looking into Betty’s classes the next time I am in NYC!

L’Shana Tova to any of my Jewish readers! I spent the last two days attending Rosh Hashanah services with Fiance and his family, which was quite an experience. I attended with them last year, and, to be honest, I find the amount of Hebrew kind of overwhelming to someone who doesn’t understand a bit of it. It is traditional for those attending services to take the two days of Rosh Hashanah off of work to celebrate the Jewish New Year, so I did this as well. Learning about Fiance’s culture and religion is fascinating.

As I said previously, I attended the SF Slutwalk, and took a lot of fabulous pictures. I had a great time, and it really re-energized my dedication to Nice Girls. For the complete set of pictures, you can visit the album on my new imgur account (some images may be NSFW). There were some fantastic speakers at the pre-walk rally in Dolores Park, including Carol Queen, the founder of the Center for Sexuality and Culture, who wore a fabulous shirt that said I ❤ Female Orgasm; Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who spoke about his experiences being a drag queen in Philadelphia in the 1970s; and, my personal favorite, Assemblywoman Carol Lieber, who told us that she is a slut, and hopes to be one all of her life.

Then, the Slutwalk began. We walked about half a mile, some of the ladies managed to do it in their stilettos! We cheered as a woman came out, asked what the march was about, and joined as soon as she understood. There were chants, but I spent most of my time running around taking pictures of everyone (but not before asking for their consent, of course)! We ended up at a small plaza in the Castro.

At that time, anyone at the walk could take the bullhorn and share a story. A few chose to just thank the crowd of people who attended. I got up and spoke about how the walk had inspired me to continue writing on Nice Girls and some of my experiences with rape culture. There were a couple of men sitting at a table who were definitely angry at their pleasant afternoon being invaded by a group of women, some of them dressed in lingerie. Unfortunately, a couple of the attendees had already responded to the gentlemens’ consternation with some anger, but I took the opportunity to sit down and explain the purpose and the message of the Slutwalk. They seemed a lot less upset afterwards, and I even saw one of them cheering after an attendee’s speech.

Overall, as I said, the Slutwalk was an overwhelmingly positive experience. I had a great time meeting new people, test driving the new-to-me camera, and listening to the poignant and interesting stories each speaker had to share. I can’t wait for next year!

Hey everyone, I apologize for not updating at all in the past few days. I caught some sort of stomach bug from Fiance’s little sister, and have been feverish and nauseated for several days now.

I am so glad that Fiance made me get out of bed early on Saturday morning so that I could attend the SF Slutwalk. You see, I’ve been feeling some pretty serious internet burnout for a few weeks now, and it seemed like every time I found something to write about, it was an issue that made me angry. It is exhausting to be angry for hours every day. I had reached a point where I dreaded sitting down with my laptop, because I knew that by the end of my posts, I would be emotionally exhausted.

SF Slutwalk rejuvenated me. It made me realize that I needed to get back to doing more sex-positive stuff in general, not just finding something to be angry about. Hopefully in the next few days, I will have the energy to go through the 350 pictures I took at Slutwalk (thank you, to those of you who let me take your picture!), and post a write up. For now, I would like to say thank you to the organizers and attendees for giving me some much-needed encouragement.

I’d also like to say thank you to Fiance, for helping me create a schedule and to find topics that still fall under sex-positivity, but won’t leave me feeling disgusted with the world.

I’d also like to thank you, dear readers. I’ll still be posting on feminist issues here, but I’m going to re-focus on sex-positive information, including reviews on toys, books, and yes, even some pornography. Thanks for sticking with me. I hope you’ll enjoy the new content.

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Ooh! A saucy and sexy topic to start your Monday off right. Today’s post is most definitely Not Safe For Work, so for those of you who read Nice Girls at work, you might want to either switch to your mobile device or hold off until you are at home to read this one! Read the rest of this entry →

In browsing some of the events on the Center for Sex and Culture’s website, I was pretty intrigued to see a series by Airial Clark, author of The Sex-Positive Parent.

Airial and I both attended OpenSF a few months ago, and while we didn’t have the opportunity to chat, I started following her on twitter. During the conference, I was impressed at the level of discourse she presented in a pithy 140 characters or less (with a hashtag, nonetheless!), and I have only become more impressed as I have continued to follow her and read her blog.

To create a culture described in my “This is Why” post, we have to start with the interactions between parents and children. Children need to learn, at an early age, that sexuality and gender are not a source of shame, but of joy. If any of my readers are parents in the San Francisco Bay Area, I highly recommend that you attend Airial’s workshop series later this month. You can purchase tickets here.

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On Friday evening, I had the distinct pleasure of attending the artist’s reception for “Doing Your Dirty Work”, a sampler of contemporary art about sex at the Center for Sex and Culture here in San Francisco. Warning, the links in this post would all be considered NSFW.

The CSC sent out a request for submissions, and were shocked at the volume of work they received for consideration of this highly curated show. According to their website, many of pieces submitted were from established artists and their more sexual work is excluded from their otherwise successful careers, others were artists who have never achieved success due to the sexual themes of their work.

Many of the art pieces were explicit in nature, but others explored sexuality in a subtler fashion. I had two personal favorites. L’Origin du Inflatable Love Doll, by Sydney Hardin, is a critique of L’Origin du Monde and a thought-provoking piece. If this piece had been for sale, you can bet that Fiance and I would have figured out a way to purchase it. My other favorite was of a less explicit nature. Brotherly Love, by Jason Talley, is a gorgeous painting and depicts three young black men in a tender and private moment.

I also had the opportunity to have a conversation with Robert Lawrence, the President and Co-Founder of the CSC. One of the missions of the CSC is to provide judgement-free sexual education, and they offer classes and a certification. I am very excited to start attending classes at the CSC.

Doing Your Dirty Work runs from August 3-September 1, and I can highly recommend it.

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Hey everyone, I am so excited to be telling you all about this awesome new convention that is going to happen in San Francisco next year. GaymerCon is the first gaming and tech convention with a focus on LGBT geek culture. This is shaping up to be a fantastically inclusive and sex-positive geek and gamer convention.

Fiance and I know a few of the awesome guys who are involved, and they are committed to putting on a convention that is groundbreaking in inclusiveness. As soon as my paycheck comes in, I am definitely donating to the kickstarter fund! You should too. Here’s where you can do it.

P.S. I totally want to see Mario and Sonic make out too. Oooh, inter-console snorgling!

I just read an article on the Daily Beast, discussing the admirable way that the Olympic committees have decided to approach the simple fact that when people are living in the same area, there’s going to be some sex.

According to the article, the Athletes’ Village at the London Olympics has over 100,000 Durex condoms on hand, free for the taking for athletes. Apparently this is a tradition now, as the 2008 Beijing Olympics actually ran out of 70,000 condoms, and had to re-order an additional 20,000. There are some slightly salacious stories revolving around the permissive and celebratory nature of the Olympic Village if you knowwhere tofind them.

The Olympics is a time to celebrate athleticism, and for the nations of the world to come together, compete, and celebrate the best our countries have to offer. With such a commitment to safer sex, education about STIs (especially HIV and AIDS), and what seems to be a universal policy of protecting the privacy of Olympians, the Olympic committees are getting two huge thumbs up from me.

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You can find Part 1 of my Planned Parenthood Experience here. I was nervous when I woke up on the morning of my appointment. Bleary-eyed, I put on clothes, kissed the still sleeping Boyfriend goodbye, and headed to the car.

I entered the office and checked myself in with the front desk. After filling out some information regarding my current sexual activity, my income, and my sexual health history, I handed the clipboard in and watched Say Anything as I waited.

There was a group of three young women behind me, and they were discussing birth control options as they too were waiting to be seen. My ears perked up when one of them mentioned that she was considering getting an IUD. As readers of this blog are fully aware, I am a HUGE fanof IUDs, and I took the opportunity to share my experiences with it, and some of the awesome statistics.

After a short period of time, I was called into the back room, and had a chat with one of the attending nurses. She explained that, due to my symptoms and the length of time since my last pap smear, I was going to have a full pelvic exam and a full STI screening. She also explained that the state of California has an awesome program to help people with limited income to receive sexual health care for free, and even with my new job, I qualified.

The STI screening started right there in that tiny office with a prick of my middle finger. This particular test was to screen if I had been exposed to HIV, and amazingly, I would have the results of that test by the end of my appointment. I was blown away by this fantastic advance in HIV screening.

I went into the exam room after giving a urine sample, undressed my lower half, and waited again. When the doctor came in, she was very communicative and explained everything before she started examining me. She took three samples from my cervix, examined the positioning of my IUD (still in place!), and checked that my uterus and ovaries were not swollen. Before she moved her hands, placed the speculum, or swabbed, she was sure to tell me exactly what she was about to do. This definitely put my mind at ease, and kept me from jumping or starting when anything changed.

When she was done, she took one of the samples to their in-house lab, and checked it all out. Apparently, I had a bacterial infection that may have been the cause of the bleeding, and she handed me a prescription antibiotic. Then she told me that Planned Parenthood would call me if any of the other STI tests came back positive, but only if they were positive.

Unfortunately, I did receive one of those calls. My pap smear came back with some abnormalities. At some point in the past 10 years, I was exposed to HPV. The tiny sample that was taken was not enough to determine if I have one of the more benign forms, or if it is one of the types that can lead to cervical cancer. So, I have yet another appointment set to get some biopsies done.

I’ll have a post up on Wednesday, discussing HPV. I’ve gotten to know my STI a lot better since the diagnosis.